The present invention comprises a new Ipomoea, botanically known as Ipomoea batatas (L.) Lam, and commonly known as Ornamental Sweet Potato, and hereinafter referred to by the variety name ‘Seki Lim’. These plants are grown, not for their flowers, but for their foliage and plant habit characteristics. These plants flower very rarely and then only under strict short day lengths. Each flower is ephemeral, in that it only lasts up to 24 hours, and blooms mostly through the night and early morning hours.
‘Seki Lim’ is a product of a planned breeding program. The new cultivar ‘Seki Lim’ has a compact and mounding plant habit that becomes more outwardly trailing with age, vigorous, freely branching with dense lime-green heart shaped to slightly palmately-lobed foliage, with soft purple and white flowers.
‘Seki Lim’ originated from a cross pollination in a controlled breeding program in Gilroy, Calif. USA. The female parent was ‘Sweet Caroline Light Green’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 15,028). ‘Sweet Caroline Light Green’ has lighter green foliage, a less compact habit, longer petioles and darker flower color than ‘Seki Lim’.
The male parent of ‘Seki Lim’ was ‘Margurite’, an unpatented commercial variety, with larger foliage and less compact plant habit than ‘Seki Lim’.
‘Seki Lim’ was selected as one flowering plant within the progeny of the stated cross in March 2007, in a controlled environment in Gilroy, Calif. USA. The pollination took place in October 2006 and the seed sown in December 2006.
The first act of asexual reproduction of ‘Seki Lim’ was accomplished when vegetative cuttings were used from the initial selection in the March 2007 in a controlled environment in Gilroy, Calif. USA.
Horticultural examination of plants grown from cuttings of the plant initiated in March 2007 in Gilroy, Calif. USA, and continuing thereafter, has demonstrated that the combination of characteristics as herein disclosed for ‘Seki Lim’ are firmly fixed and are retained through successive generations of asexual reproduction.
‘Seki Lim’ has not been observed under all possible environmental conditions. The phenotype may vary significantly with variations in environment such as temperature, light intensity and day length.
A Plant Breeder's Right for this cultivar was applied for in Canada on Dec. 24, 2007. ‘Seki Lim’ has not been made publicly available more than one year prior to the filing of this application.